Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Even though the ability to think in larger than binary terms is what makes us better than computers, we still like to break down everything into binary terms, because it’s simpler. Black and white, hot and cold, male and female, young and old, rich and poor. Of course, there are gradations and exceptions to all of these, and if we want to think about things seriously, they should all be taken into account as well.
So it is with politics. Although some people are focused more on human rights and others on the economy, some have pet issues, and some just hate everybody, we do, very broadly, fall into two categories.
There are those who accept the phrase “We are all in the same boat” and there are those who believe “It’s every man for himself.”
For myself, I’m an ‘all in the same boat’ kind of guy. I can see a sort of poetic truth in the every man for himself logic. We are born alone, we will die alone. But if mankind is ever to evolve to a higher level, if we are ever even to make this world a better world than it is now, we have to think, and act, collectively.

I’m generally against censorship, especially if it’s heavy handed and unfair. And, I see a lot of my friends complaining about how they got banned from Facebook, or had to spend time in ‘Facebook jail,’ and they always think it was unfair, so I suppose I should side with them. Also, when you see that notification that says ‘violates our community standards,’ it’s sort of hard to form a judgement, not knowing what those standards are.
But I saw one complaint today that made me think. It said something like “the bots don’t understand sarcasm” Which is an argument in favor of more human moderators, which would go a long way toward alleviating unfairness, create a lot of jobs, and is well within Mark Zuckerberg’s means. But that’s not really my topic for today.
Every kind of communication has its strengths and weaknesses. When language was first developed, it was a great boon to mankind, but saying “I see danger on the horizon” has less immediate impact than a high pitched shriek.
When print was developed, it meant there was less need for everybody to remember everything.
Now, on the internet, we have a whole new set of problems. On the one hand, we can bitch about censorship, which can be emotionally gratifying but won’t get us heard. On the other hand, we can learn to write better, in a more straightforward, factual manner, or in a higher level of sarcasm which the machines won’t spot. But, I doubt many of us have the ability to do that. Especially since we don’t know what the censorship bots are looking for.

I’ve seen hundreds of people posting and commenting on Facebook about the fact that Rush Limbaugh is dead. None of them are mournful, or upset. A few have expressed condolence to Limbaugh’s friends and family before pointing out what an absolute shithead he was and how the world is a better place without him in it.
I posted something to that effect myself. But, of course, Rush Limbaugh was a product of his time, he figured out early in his career that racism and hate would make him popular, and, boy, did he go with it. There are plenty of other people out there in radio, TV, and internet journalism who will pick up his Klan torch and keep marching. We really don’t have much reason to celebrate his death, and yet we do.
The era of civility, of speaking no ill of the dead, is over. We live in a world of total information, and people have a whole lifetime to prove they are good people. Limbaugh chose to go the other way, and that was his choice. He doesn’t get a pass just because he is dead.
On the other hand and contrariwise, I saw a Valentine’s Day meme just a few seconds ago, which is apparently a big laugh riot among the boys at the LAPD. It shows a picture of George Floyd, who was murdered by the Minneapolis police, and bears the caption “You take my breath away.”
Why do I find that tasteless, and yet I am gleefully participating in the virtual mass pissing on Limbaugh’s grave? Well, for one thing, we on the left didn’t actually murder Limbaugh. He lived to the ripe old age of 70. It’s not like Michael Moore put his knee on Limbaugh’s neck for 9 minutes while onlookers begged for his life. Although, admittedly, I’d have probably celebrated that even more.
It’s mostly because Limbaugh was a powerful, wealthy figure who had an audience. He actually made a difference in the world, and the difference he chose to make was to make the world worse.
George Floyd was neither rich nor powerful and, in that, he was a lot more like all the rest of us. He was an average person. Yeah, he had a minor criminal record. Probably at least half of the American public indulges in some criminal activity every day, whether it’s smoking a joint, failure to signal a left turn, or ignoring a building code violation that you’ve known is there for the last 20 years but if nobody’s taking you to court over it, what the hell. He wasn’t preaching hate to millions of people every day, and
none of us had even heard of him before he died.
The only people laughing about his death are the same kind of people who killed him. Cops.
Police are right up there with dentists as being the least funny people in the world. They really should just shut the hell up about everything and just focus on their jobs. Which should not include killing people.

Well, Texas. That’s got to be the topic of today. Of course, it is normal, in the middle of winter, for some places that snow doesn’t regularly fall, to have traffic problems and other minor inconveniences which gives everybody up north a few laughs and seldom kills anybody.
But, this is a bit worse. The power’s out, a lot of places are without water, and the snow is more than just a little bit. From the pictures I’ve seen, this would rate as serious snowfall up north as well. So, I will refrain from the cheap jokes and say I do wish all my friends in Texas well. Hope you get power and water back soon, and have plenty of warm clothes to wear until you do get it all sorted.
One extra negative side effect of the current woes, however, is that it may make it even harder to convince some Texans, those who understand slogans better than science, the Global Warming is real and this is the result of it. I suspect it’s the ‘global’ part that’s got them confused right about now. But, if there were a national grid based on wind and solar power, as Bernie suggested, or even an international grid, as Buckminster Fuller suggested, more than a half century ago, Texas would not be without power now. Connections with the outside world are vital. Secession is silly talk.
If we were to plant about a gazillion new trees worldwide (and Texas certainly has room for a lot of them), and improve public transport and rail travel, we might be able to clean some of the carbon out of the air and reverse global warming, or at least slow it down.
People in Texas should support this. Because, as you’ve just seen, you’re one of the areas that’s going to be hard hit by global climate change. Saying it’s not real is not going to make it go away.

A team of British scientists just made an amazing discovery. They planned to take samples from the seabed under an ice shelf, which I guess would have told them something important about sea beds – what they were looking for is not the newsworthy part of this story. What they found was life. Something that looked like a sponge attached to a rock, and some smaller things (the article says animals, but they look like little mushrooms to me) Anyway, plants, animals, it’s all good. They found living organisms in a place they would have not thought to find them. These are extreme even for extremophiles.
First of all, they had to drill through nearly a kilometer of ice, so no sunlight reaches down there. Then there’s the question of food. The open ocean is hundreds of miles from the drill site, so any organic matter has to drift a long way before it gets there.
Still, it’s there, they’ve found it, our boundaries of where life can possibly exist have just been expanded and, the way I see it, the old Drake equation has been filled in a bit more, and one place in the solar system has become a much more likely target.
I am referring, of course, to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, one of the four discovered by Galileo way back when. It’s covered with ice but scientists suspect that ice covers a liquid ocean. Maybe there are sponges and mushroom like creatures in that ocean. Maybe there are fish.
I hope some day somebody goes up and takes a look.